Page 158 of The Bet
“Something happen to her dad?”
“Her dad?”
He could see Izzy’s familiar knapsack lying on the floor. “She’s here, isn’t she?” he tried to walk through, but Cara stuck her foot in the way. “I need to see her.”
“She doesn’t want to see you.”
What the fuck?“What? Why?”
“She said so.”
What the hell was going on? “I need to see her.Please,” he begged. “I don’t even know what’s wrong.”
“You slime ball.”
Okay. So something definitely was wrong.
“Let me through, otherwise I’m not moving, and you’re going to have to stare at my face all day long.”
Cara moved out of the way and he could have sworn he heard her mutter a “good luck” as he knocked on Izzy’s door.
She didn’t answer.
“Izzy,” he raised his voice, and knocked. “What’s going on?” He knocked again, tried the door handle, but she had bolted the door from inside. “We need to talk. Let me in.”
“Go to hell.” At least he knew she was in there.
“I will. I promise I’ll leave, but you have to tell me what’s wrong first. I don’t have a goddamn clue.”
Before he had time to knock again, the door flung open, and Izzy’s angry eyes burned into his.
“What’s wrong?” she cried, the rage rising in her voice. “What’s wrong is thatbetyou placed on me. That’s what’s wrong.”
She knew about the bet? How the fuck had she found out?
“You placed abeton me?” The horrified look on her face hit him like a sledgehammer. “You don’t deny it, then?”
His face fell, and with it, his insides. “I can explain,” he said, desperate for her to hear him out. He should have told her. He should have come clean sooner. It just looked bad, realbad, and no matter what his intentions were now, they had been indecent before. “Let me explain, Izzy.”
“I don’t want to hear it. I already know everything I need to know.”
His head was spinning in a thousand different directions. “I know it looks bad, but I can explain.”
“You don’t need to,” she screamed. “It’s easy enough to understand. You placed a bet on getting me to go out with you, and you bet $10k to do that? What kind of an asshole are you? I thought Shoemoney was bad, but you’re evil on another scale altogether.”
“It’s not how it sounds.”
“You nasty piece of shit!” she screamed, the words emphasizing her rage more succinctly than her shriek could have. “Is that all I was to you, anotherpussy?”
He swallowed, knowing now exactly what she thought of him. Knowing he’d gone into the wasteland where he could never come back from. “Please let me in, Izzy. Please give me a chance.”
“I don’t ever want to see you again!” The whites of her eyes protruded, giving her a hysterical appearance. The devastation he had wreaked on her was written all over her face.
“You should do the decent thing and leave,” Cara told him. “You’ve done enough damage.”
“He didn’t deny it,” Izzy said to her friend. “You said to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I tried to, but he did it. Hereallydid it.”
Cara turned on him like an angry twin, giving him a look that could make his insides shrivel. Izzy slammed the door in his face, and he was left standing with an angry best friend to deal with .
